{"id":41987,"date":"2015-07-26T22:37:23","date_gmt":"2015-07-26T22:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41987"},"modified":"2015-07-26T22:37:23","modified_gmt":"2015-07-26T22:37:23","slug":"i-am-a-native-american-woman-with-white-privilege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41987","title":{"rendered":"I Am a Native American Woman With White Privilege"},"content":{"rendered":"

I Am a Native American Woman With White Privilege<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

YES, I SAID; YES, I WILL, YES. writing by Misty Ellingburg<\/a>
\n2015-07-24<\/p>\n

Misty Ellingburg<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

First off, I think it\u2019s important to say that I do not, and have not ever primarily identified as white. On my mother\u2019s side, I\u2019m Native American, enrolled in ghostmy Tribe, and, to a large extent, raised in my culture. I was born on the reservation and lived on or near reservations for much of my life. Indigenous cultural signifiers are important to me \u2013 I love Coastal designs and canoes. I love to eat Salmon, attend gatherings, and socialize at potlatches<\/a> or powwows<\/a>. However, due to genetics (while both my grandparents on my mother\u2019s side are Indigenous, my grandmother is light-skinned, and my grandfather, of mixed ancestry) it so happens that I am light. Like, really light. Light as a ghost, let-me-put-my-arm-next-to-yours-and-compare-whiteness light. Some people call me glow-worm because they think I\u2019ll be florescent under blacklights.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of ways in which it sucks to be a light or white-presenting Native American. I\u2019m often not recognizable, even to people of my own nationality. Sometimes, I even have to perform to be seen by myself, as if by wearing turquoise and beadwork, I won\u2019t get so lost in the Western world. Of course, it\u2019s so much deeper than that, but it can help to have outward reflections of an inner truth. If I\u2019m not performing for myself, it can feel as if I\u2019m performing to others. At times, (though very rarely) others with mixed-Native heritage have compared themselves to me, as if I were on the bottom of the scale for Native-presenting-ness. \u201cOh, I look mixed, but I look more Native than Mistylynn, right?\u201d This desperately begs the question, What does a Native person look like? As I\u2019ve posed it at other times on this blog, I\u2019ll leave that question for others to chew on. Suffice to say, the need to be visible, and to have a voice as an Indigenous woman, is important to me. Native issues are my issues, are the issues of my people. I identify as an American Indian woman.<\/p>\n

And I have white privilege…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I Am a Native American Woman With White Privilege YES, I SAID; YES, I WILL, YES. writing by Misty Ellingburg 2015-07-24 Misty Ellingburg First off, I think it\u2019s important to say that I do not, and have not ever primarily identified as white. On my mother\u2019s side, I\u2019m Native American, enrolled in ghostmy Tribe, and, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,395,8,3015,20],"tags":[20527,20526],"class_list":["post-41987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-media-archive","category-native-americans","category-usa","tag-misty-ellingburg","tag-yes-i-said-yes-i-will-yes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41988,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41987\/revisions\/41988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}